Area we serve · Hillsborough County
Car accident lawyer in Citrus Park
A community that grew 16% in a decade on roads that did not
A crash in Citrus Park is a Hillsborough County claim under the same Florida law as anywhere else: fourteen days to get initial care, the injury threshold, two years to sue. What is local is that the road decides almost everything procedural. Citrus Park is unincorporated — 28,178 people at the 2020 census, up from 24,252 in 2010, spread over 10.82 square miles — and the Veterans Expressway runs straight through it as a limited-access toll road operated by Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise. A crash on the expressway, a crash on a county road and a crash in a shopping center are three different claims against three different defendants. What follows is about that distinction.
01 What a crash here actually looks like
Growth on a two-lane road network
Citrus Park added nearly 4,000 people between 2010 and 2020, a 16% increase, without a matching change to the roads underneath it. Gunn Highway, Sheldon Road, Linebaugh Avenue and Ehrlich Road still carry the pattern of a semi-rural county, and they now carry suburban volumes.
The Veterans Expressway cuts through the middle and does two things at once: it takes long-distance traffic off the local roads, and it dumps all of that traffic onto a handful of interchanges. The pressure lands at Gunn Highway, Linebaugh Avenue and Ehrlich Road, where a limited-access ramp meets a road that was never widened to receive it.
Gunn Highway curves. It is a county road that follows older alignments rather than a grid, and the crashes reported on it near Race Track and Copeland roads include riders who went off at a curve. A road that bends where drivers expect it to run straight produces single-vehicle and run-off-road crashes that have nothing to do with another car.
The intersection crashes are the serious ones. Sheldon Road and Linebaugh Avenue has produced reported fatal crashes involving a driver running the signal, which is the pattern that puts three or four vehicles and multiple injured people into one claim and sets the insurers against each other over who pays.
A crash on the expressway, on a county road and in a parking lot are three different claims.
02 What nobody tells you
The nearest emergency room is not a hospital
The closest emergency care is the AdventHealth Westchase ER at 10977 Sheldon Road, and it is an off-campus emergency department — the state lists it under AdventHealth Carrollwood, nine miles away. It is not a hospital and it is not a trauma center. A serious injury is screened and stabilized there, then moved to St. Joseph’s, the Level II adult and state-designated pediatric trauma center, or to Tampa General, Hillsborough’s only Level I adult trauma center.
That produces two of everything. Two facilities, two charts, two sets of bills, and the facility fee from a freestanding emergency department is often the item that startles people most when the statement arrives. All of it belongs in the claim, and the $10,000 Personal Injury Protection limit does not cover it.
Citrus Park is unincorporated, so the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office patrols it. The county has exactly three incorporated cities — Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City — and Citrus Park is none of them. On the Veterans Expressway, the Florida Highway Patrol normally works the crash instead.
Who maintains the road decides who can be sued over it. A claim about the road surface, a signal or a sight obstruction goes against whichever government holds that road: Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise on the expressway, Hillsborough County on Gunn Highway or Sheldon Road, the City of Tampa if the crash happened across a municipal line. Each one runs under § 768.28, which starts with a written notice, and getting the wrong defendant costs the claim time it does not have.
A Citrus Park case is filed in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, at 800 East Twiggs Street. Most injury claims are resolved with the insurer before any lawsuit is filed.
03 The roads
Where the claims actually come from
The Veterans Expressway, a limited-access toll road through the community, where speeds are highway speeds, the Florida Highway Patrol usually writes the report, and a stopped or disabled vehicle is the most dangerous thing on it.
Gunn Highway, the old county route, curving past Race Track and Copeland roads, where run-off-road and motorcycle crashes are reported and the curve itself is part of the story.
Sheldon Road, the north-south connector past the freestanding emergency room, carrying commuter and shopping traffic through signalized intersections built for less of it.
Linebaugh Avenue and Ehrlich Road, the two east-west crossings, both feeding expressway ramps and both producing the turning and red-light collisions that come with that.
Citrus Park Drive and the retail approaches, where a parking lot crash is not a highway matter at all: fault is argued without a police report in many cases, and the property owner’s own conduct can be part of the claim.
04 What to do now
The things that can only be done in the first two weeks
What follows is a checklist rather than advice about your situation, and none of it commits you to anything.
Get seen within fourteen days
Personal Injury Protection pays nothing at all if the first treatment falls outside fourteen days — not a reduced amount, nothing. The emergency room on Sheldon Road counts, as does urgent care and as does your own doctor.
Write down exactly where it happened
On the expressway, on the ramp, or on the road under it. Those are three different road authorities and potentially three different responding agencies, and in a claim about the road itself the answer decides who the defendant is.
Note the agency and the report number
Florida Highway Patrol on the Veterans Expressway, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office on the county roads. The report is requested the same way whichever one wrote it.
Keep both hospital statements
If you were moved from the Sheldon Road emergency room to a trauma center, there are two bills and two charts. The freestanding facility fee is a real charge and it belongs in the claim rather than in a drawer.
Pull your own declarations page
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, and whether it stacks. On a toll expressway the at-fault driver may never be identified, and then your own policy is the entire case.
Do not give the other insurer a recorded statement
You are not required to. The answer given in the first week gets quoted back for the next two years.
05 The kinds of crash this covers
An expressway, a curving county road, and the claims they produce
Hillsborough County recorded 26,269 traffic crashes in 2024, with 17,359 people injured and 180 killed, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. No published count exists for Citrus Park alone. What a community with a toll expressway through the middle of it produces is a different mix from a city grid.
Car accidents
The bulk of it. Here it splits in two: expressway crashes at highway speed where the injuries are worse and the Highway Patrol writes the report, and intersection crashes on the county roads where the fight is over who had the signal.
Motorcycle accidents
Gunn Highway’s curves draw riders and punish a misjudged one, and the fatal motorcycle crashes reported here were single-vehicle. There is no Personal Injury Protection requirement for a motorcycle, so whether any coverage reaches the rider is the first question rather than the last.
Hit-and-run
On a limited-access toll road a driver who leaves is often never identified, and hit-and-run crashes have been reported at the Ehrlich Road interchange. When there is no other insurer, the claim becomes an uninsured motorist claim against your own policy, and it starts with prompt written notice.
Uninsured drivers
An expressway brings in drivers who live in another county entirely, and whatever they carry is what the claim has to work with. Florida requires no bodily injury liability coverage at all, so the underinsured case is the ordinary one, and your own uninsured motorist coverage is what fills the gap.
06 Also for Citrus Park
The other matters this office takes from here
Injury work is most of this practice. The rest run from the Tampa office east of here, each with its own page and its own fee terms.
Property insurance claims
A community that grew through the 1990s and 2000s is now reaching the age where the original roof and the original water heater fail at once, and the insurer’s response is that both simply wore out. Notice of the claim is due within one year of the date of loss.
Family law
Divorce, time-sharing, support, property and protective orders in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, filed downtown at 800 East Twiggs Street.
Immigration
Removal defense, bond, asylum, family petitions and citizenship. None of Florida’s three immigration courts is in Tampa, so what controls a case is not where you live.
Criminal defense
Bond and release conditions, DUI, drug charges and theft. In unincorporated Citrus Park the arrest is the Sheriff’s, and a traffic stop on the Veterans Expressway is the Highway Patrol’s.
07 How this works
The consultation, the documents, and what it costs
The first conversation is with Jose A. Dapena, not with an intake department. On an injury matter it is free and commits you to nothing, and it can happen by phone.
The Tampa office is at 4231 N Habana Avenue, east of here. It is the office that serves all of Hillsborough County.
Fees differ by practice and are stated before anything is signed. Injury work is contingent, normally payable only if there is a recovery, with costs governed by the written agreement. Family and immigration are hourly, with payment plans and separate government filing fees. Criminal is a flat fee set by the charges and the scope, with no payment plans. The free consultation is an injury term and does not travel to the others.
08 Who you deal with
Jose A. Dapena
Admitted to The Florida Bar in 1998, number 152358, and admitted to the United States District Courts for the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida — the Middle District covers Hillsborough.
Before representing injured people he was in-house counsel for a Personal Injury Protection carrier, reviewing claims on the insurer’s behalf: the same analysis a claim meets now, learned from the other side of the file.
09 The law behind this
- Fla. Stat. § 627.736 Personal Injury Protection
80% of medical expenses and 60% of lost wages up to $10,000, and the fourteen-day deadline for initial care.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.28 Claims against a government
Written notice first, and three years to give it — to the agency, and also to the Florida Department of Financial Services where the defendant is the state rather than the county. Six months for the agency to respond, and caps of $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident.
- Fla. Stat. § 768.81 Comparative fault
More than 50% at fault and the claim recovers nothing, which is the whole argument in a disputed-signal collision.
- Fla. Stat. § 95.11 Deadlines
Two years to sue on most negligence claims accruing on or after March 24, 2023.
10 Official resources
- FLHSMV crash portalWhere a crash report is requested, whichever agency wrote it
- Hillsborough County Sheriff’s OfficeThe agency that patrols unincorporated Citrus Park
- Florida’s Turnpike EnterpriseThe agency that operates and maintains the Veterans Expressway
- Thirteenth Judicial CircuitThe court a Hillsborough case is filed in
Questions
Who writes the crash report in Citrus Park?
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office on the county roads, because Citrus Park is unincorporated and has no police department of its own. On the Veterans Expressway the Florida Highway Patrol normally works it. Either way the report is requested through the FLHSMV crash portal.
Which hospital would I be taken to?
The nearest emergency care is the AdventHealth Westchase ER at 10977 Sheldon Road, which is an off-campus emergency department rather than a hospital — the state lists it under AdventHealth Carrollwood. A serious injury is stabilized there and transferred to St. Joseph’s, the Level II adult and state-designated pediatric trauma center, or to Tampa General, the county’s only Level I adult trauma center.
Why did I get two bills for one crash?
Because a freestanding emergency department and the trauma center that received you are separate facilities, each billing for its own care, and the freestanding facility fee is charged on top of the treatment. Both statements belong in the claim. Two facilities also exhaust a $10,000 Personal Injury Protection limit quickly, which is why other coverage is identified in the first week.
My crash was on the Veterans Expressway. Does that change anything?
Yes. The Florida Highway Patrol normally writes the report rather than the Sheriff, the speeds involved tend to make the injuries worse, and if the condition of the road is part of the claim the defendant is Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise, which operates it, rather than Hillsborough County. A claim against a state agency starts with written notice under § 768.28, given to the agency and to the Florida Department of Financial Services both — which a claim against the county does not require.
The driver left and was never found.
That is a hit-and-run, and it is reported on this stretch of road. With no other insurer to pursue, the claim becomes an uninsured motorist claim against your own policy. Those policies require prompt notice, so the clock on them is shorter than the two-year deadline to sue.
Is there an office in Citrus Park?
No. The office is at 4231 N Habana Avenue, east of here, and it serves all of Hillsborough County.
How long do I have?
Fourteen days to get initial care for Personal Injury Protection to pay anything, and two years to sue on most negligence claims. If a government road authority is the defendant, four years to sue but written notice within three.
Talk to Jose A. Dapena about a crash in Citrus Park
The Tampa office on North Habana Avenue is east of here and serves all of Hillsborough County. The first conversation about an injury costs nothing.